Dolga Vas at Lendava, Jewish Cemetery

There are few monuments to Jewish culture in Slovenia, since the Austrian authorities exiled the Jews in 1515 from what was then Slovenian territory. Later only a few settled in secluded towns and villages. Larger groups live on the coast, in Gorica, Maribor and Ljubljana; the largest community is in Prekmurje. During World War II, after the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944, the majority of Jews from Prekmurje were taken by trains to the camps and to their deaths. Only 65 survived and returned, 18 of them from Lendava.

At the north edge of Dolga Vas at Lendava, on the east side of the road that leads towards the border crossing, lies an abandoned Jewish cemetery, one of three preserved Jewish cemeteries in Slovenia (the others are in Nova Gorica and Ljubljana). The presence of the cemetery confirms that there was a larger group of Jews in Prekmurje, as they moved with the development of commerce from the interior of Hungary in the second half of the 18th century. The largest number of Jewish inhabitants (1107) lived in Prekmurje in 1889, and then the number drastically decreased.

The Jewish cemeteries in Prekmurje were in Beltinci (where there is no monument), in Murska Sobota (a memorial park with some tombstones has been arranged) and in Dolga Vas at Lendava.

In 1834 the Jewish religious community founded the cemetery society. They leased the land in Dolga Vas and had paid it off by 1890. All the way until World War II, the cemetery was nicely arranged and maintained. Today in the abandoned cemetery there are 176 tombstones of different sizes, age and condition. Some were transported from Beltinci. Forty older tombstones are from the second half of the 19th century. After 1945 only one person was buried in that cemetery. In the mortuary there are two memorial plaques (from 1906 with the names of members of the committee for the regulation of the cemetery and one in memory of those buried in Beltinci cemetery). In the middle of the cemetery stands the monument to 387 victims of the Nazi genocide, which was erected by four surviving internees in 1947.